George Floyd protests across the US

Doctors from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director on down have cautioned demonstrators that crowds provide a perfect opportunity for the coronavirus to spread.

But, after weeks of holing up at home under pandemic lockdown, Jazondre Gibbs was glad to finally have something she could do. She was up early Saturday morning, packing her car and driving with her mom into the center of Washington, DC, so they could set up a table loaded with bags of snacks, water, hand sanitizer and other supplies to hand out to crowds demonstrating after the death of George Floyd.

“We can’t really control how many tests there are and how many masks there are – those types of things,” Gibbs told CNN. “But I can control the time that I spend to put these bags together and I can control how much time I want to spend doing this. Those are things I can be in control of.”

Sarah Foster also felt the demonstrations were a chance to take action after weeks of passive inaction.

The 36-year-old engineer had walked from her home to join the demonstration.

“So this is finally something we can do, and something important that we can be part of, that we can help solve,” Foster told CNN. “Obviously, people are a little bit closer together than is the recommended six-foot distance, but I think what we are doing is so important. Everyone’s gotten used to finding a way to stay separated.”

Monica Schoch-Spana, a senior scholar of medical anthropology at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, sees the issue of George Floyd’s killing as a crisis pressing enough to bring people out despite their fears about the coronavirus.

“People have been sequestered for a long period of time. And, quite frankly, the majority of people have stuck in there with regard to physical distancing. They have now found a reason to break with that established pattern that has gone on for weeks and weeks and weeks,” Schoch-Spana told CNN.